


Nothing Left/Everything Right

by TTMIYH



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alien Culture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Culture Shock, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Interspecies Relationship(s), Jane Crocker is important here, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Past Character Death, Past Violence, Post-Sburb, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Problems, Sadstuck, She does useful plot relevant things instead of being discarded like a sock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6545956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her Imperious Condescension wasn't a game abstraction, she was a person, a horrible, vile person that Roxy doesn't regret killing in the slightest. However, killing people, troll or otherwise, was something that weighed heavily on a fragile human psyche. The various trolls, far more accustomed to the act, had given her their counsel in an attempt to soothe her mind. It helped, but that didn't stop the nightmares."</p><p>A post-game fic where, three months into the new world, everyone is dealing with the various weights and burdens they carry. Resolving them will hurt, far more than any death, dream, just, heroic, or otherwise. They'll all learn, slowly, just how strong they really are.</p><p>AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Character Death and Depiction of Violence tags are for PAST DEATHS AND VIOLENCE. There will be none of that in the story's present day. I sincerely hope you enjoy the work, whether as catharsis, venting, joy, or any other kind of emotional imperative!</p><p>AUTHOR'S OTHER NOTE: This work is on a semi-hiatus due to college and also the ending credits invalidating most of its premise. I will still be continuing it at some point, but now we know that it's explicitly non-canon. ;n;</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John, Roxy, and Calliope pt 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first try at writing fan fiction, ever, so, any form of comments, criticism, questions, or other feedback is very, very welcome!

Roxy awoke in a cold sweat, like she usually did, two or three nights in a week. It was the same dream as before, the Condesce's body gurgling on tyrian blood, turning around to face her with empty white eyes, and for a moment, she could swear that the dreambubbles were real again and she would find herself throttled by the throat. Every time she had that dream, she felt her windpipe being crushed in righteous retribution, as her own skin burnt away, her eyes filling with a prismatic light. Her Imperious Condescension wasn't a game abstraction, she was a person, a horrible, vile person that Roxy doesn't regret killing in the slightest.

But killing people, troll or otherwise, was something that weighed heavily on a fragile human psyche. The various trolls, far more accustomed to the act, had given her their counsel in an attempt to soothe her mind.

It helped, but that didn't stop the nightmares.

Her head jerked upward, as always, and she clutched at her face, as always, checking her throat to make sure it was intact, as always. Of course it was. It had been three months since the new universe had been created, and everyone was deposited inside of it, separate from the endless procession of death and birth that was Sburb. They all had kept their memories despite reality in this new world being twisted as to note that they had always been there, they were already here, despite that clearly being not the case. Earth, the new Earth, continued its yearly procession around a yellow-orange Sun, with a white moon drifting by in roughly thirty day cycles, still the third rock away, with Mars and several gas giants sitting behind, no sieges from planet Jupiter in sight. Retroactively, the trolls became part of an immigrant population from a planet several star systems away, a planet with a strange way of life. It was a bit brutal and cold, but out of necessity, society and biology both evolving into aggressive niches as a defense against equally aggressive flora and fauna.

Roxy could never consider facing her. Empress Meenah, the long-lived, tyrian-blooded Empress of the Alternian Empire. Gifted by the new reality with memories of her teenaged self, she became an iron-fisted ruler, but now concerned rather than cruel, no longer a puppet of some green-skinned omnicidal maniac. 

Roxy didn't like to think about many of the implications that the new universe brought. They gave her a headache worse than the hangovers she used to nurse every other day. Now, it was a hangover every third week, a softer hangover. Sometimes she just needed to forget.

Calliope looked up at Roxy from her plush chair in the corner of the room with a quirked eye-ridge that quickly melted into a pout of concern, setting aside her sketchbook and plodding lightly to Roxy's side, putting one hand on Roxy's shoulder and the other in Roxy's palm. She was bony, like a skeleton, a soft layer of cartilaginous semi-skin allowing her flexibility in motion, her loosely-hinged jaw nuzzling into Roxy's face. Humans were always warm-blooded, Trolls had a variable heat in their veins, but Calliope was always a cool, chill ice for the flushing, horrified human that had taken her in. Without her brother or the trappings of her species, she was unable to predominate, confined to a spiral-cheeked, childish form for as long as she would keep on living. She was a successful novelist of children's stories, crafting epic tales with colorful drawings spun half from her vivid imagination, and half from the remnants of the session that had brought them all together.

Calliope was hopelessly, impossibly afraid of death. The void that came next. Adjusting to the presence of... Other people at all, was a difficult process, for someone who had lived their entire life essentially alone, with a veritably unseen instigator pounding away at her every time she tried to sleep. Calliope didn't sleep much, either. The fear, the fear of her brother returning, an unfounded fear but a terrifying one nonetheless, clutched her ticking green heart with anxiety every time her eyes fluttered shut for more than five seconds. The assistance of a certain blue blooded Troll helped immensely.

In a tiny silver lining, Calliope was almost always on guard to comfort Roxy from her nightmares. Roxy's skin was damp with perspiration, as she panted, looking into Calliope's gaze and letting her hand be squeezed in her green claw. Sometimes, the cold was no comfort, but Roxy never told her that.

"the dream?" Calliope asked. Roxy gulped and nodded, her eyes watery and unfocused. "it's okay, love, we're here for yoU!"

John's soft snoring ground to a halt as the bed shifted. Roxy scooted over to give Calliope room to sit aside her, and before long, she was joined by John, who had slid his pillow behind Roxy, sat up, and gently urged her downwards onto it. His bright blue eyes couldn't see that well with his glasses on the nightstand beside him, but he didn't need to see clearly to do what he needed to right now. Roxy's white t-shirt and slightly-large soccer shorts clung to her skin while John started to slowly rub her back and take her other hand into his.

As some sort of cruel joke, in this new world, none of them had their powers anymore. Their classes and aspects didn't matter a bit in the slightest, and yet, a pair of replica god-tier pajamas rested inside their wardrobes, as a parting gift. They were just as comfortable as they used to be. Roxy wore hers on occasion, sans the mask.

John never did.

"the dream?" The buck-toothed Egbert asked, slightly quieter than Calliope. Roxy nodded and blinked away tears, a stray droplet running down the side of her face. John solemnly nodded back and squeezed her hand.

"do yoU need me to get a book, dear?" Calliope inquired, concerned, her British accent developing further with each passing day. They had developed a habit of reading books to each other when the dreaming dead became too much to bear, but never any of Calliope's. John would never tell her, but he hated Calliope's books. It wasn't her fault, but he couldn't stand them. As for Rose, well... Nothing she published tend to be bedtime material in the first place.

"yes'm..." Roxy squeaked, prompting Calliope to rush out of the room, her bare talons thumping against the floor. John and Roxy were alone, now. He gave her a squeezing hug and a chaste peck on the cheek. Roxy would never tell him, but she hated how similar to Jake he was in that regard. John was taught well by his Dad, apparently, because he was a gentleman above gentlemen, and Roxy occasionally boiled over by herself at the thought that, in three months together on a new Earth, with a new life, they hadn't yet consummated their relationship. The most they had done was heavy petting. 

Calliope returned with her book to find John cradling Roxy in his lap, stroking her hair, murmuring something that her ears, tiny little slits in the sides of her head, couldn't quite make out.

Even if this wasn't a morning, three o'clock in it, to be exact, where she had awakened from her disturbing visions of the dreaming dead, and this wasn't a horrible time for such endeavors, Calliope knew that nothing had happened even though she took an extra five minutes pacing in circles after finding the bedtime story for the three of them. The notion that waking up from a nightmare was an inappropriate time to engage in sexual activities wasn't one that Calliope easily grasped. To her, sex was an adversity, it was a trial and a fight. That was how her species lived, after all. Ever since Roxy had confided in her about the lack of fire between them, Calliope always took a little extra time whenever she left the room, a silent promise that inconvenienced them just a little more.

None of them quite understood the others.


	2. Jack Noir pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BEGIN: Jack Noir's Introspective Quest for Redemption.

Your name, well... It used to be a lot of things. Your name used to be Bec Noir. Jackspers Noirlecrow. Sovereign Slayer. People called you a lot of things.

Your name is Jack Noir. You're a Dersite ex-archagent with one arm and no fenestrated walls to gaze past. Your surveillance talents are going to waste, rotting in this concrete cell, and so's your talent for killing. You haven't had a good stabbing in a while, or a sword, for that matter. Not even a regisword, or a tiny little knife. You've gotten so used to having one lodged inside of your chest that you guess you got complacent with it, didn't realize the true value of having a fresh blade, not from prototyping. They treat you well, feeding you three times a day, with bread, meat, and water. On account of good behavior, you've requested they replace the bread with their own beating goddamn hearts in a fit of spite, but the fucking soft Prospitans running the show here took you literally and replaced it with pickled hearts of some strange poultry. You'll never tell those fuckers that you find the organs... Delectable. There's a "bed" and a "toilet" but no transportalizers to evacuate your waste: for the first couple of weeks of your confinement, you had to be restrained and taught how to use the porcelain chair like some sort of weird deviant. 

This place is fucking strange, but you won't lie to yourself, the cushioning on the "bed" is comfortable upon your world-weary carapace. The walls and floor are a deep grey, a color that you didn't see much of on the moons, with metal bars enclosing you in, a wide array of columns instead of a fourth wall with a door. You're not sure what maniac designed this prison, but you can't deny its efficacy.

Footsteps approach. It's almost dinnertime, so you've expected this. You wonder when one of these fuckers is going to up and poison you already, or sneak into your cell at night and beat you down. You're allowed out of the cell on occasion, two or three times a week to visit some sort of outside congregational area, built in direct sunlight with no roof to protect you, obviously an attempt to fry you to death. Your armed escorts always let you stick to the shade, and make sure none of the other prisoners approach you.

One day, you asked them why?

They told you it's because you're in solitary.

No, you responded, gritting your sharp teeth together. You declare that you were already put to trial and imprisoned, so why hasn't anyone come and made you dead yet?

One of them tells you that it'd be against the law. The other tells you that the confinement's your punishment.

You didn't understand then, and you don't understand now, a month later. This isn't the way things were back on Derse. Or Prospit. Nothing about the past three months has made any sense to you at all. You don't know why you're not stuffing a grave yet.

It's only after the stepping gets closer that you are able to distinguish the two sets of footsteps. An anonymous Prospitan guard, and a lady with a satchel of mail and a scowl. It takes you a couple of seconds before you realize who she is, and your scowl matches hers. The guard tells you that you have a visitor. The dame remains silent. You tell them both to fuck right off. The Parcel Mistress looks upon you with a withering, contemptuous glare. You grab the bars and lunge forward, pressing your face between the cold metal.

You ask her where her sword is and she says nothing. And then you ask her about her ring, and she says nothing. You ask her if she got rid of the ring, sneering at her. You tell her that you almost didn't recognize her without a big doggy snout and with both her arms. There's a dull pain where your own limb isn't anymore.

She tells you that you have a letter, crumpling it up in her fist. 

You ask her from who, who the fuck in their right mind would write a letter to you? You find out once she punches you in the face with it, knocking you away from the bars and sending you off balance. A rude exclamation leaves your mouth as you land right on your ass, crumpling like the letter that she drops between your legs. She turns around and leaves without a word, and you notice that at some point, your meal'd been slipped between the slot of the bars and onto the ground for you. Now you don't have to get up, so you unfurl the letter while the guard walks away silently. Says it's from a Miss Paint. You toss it over your shoulder into the corner, you'll look at it later. Name doesn't ring a bell, but it's the first mail you've gotten in three months. Maybe after dinner, you mumble to yourself, grabbing a tiny little heart and pressing it between your teeth.

It's times like these that you wish you knew the name of the dame that helped patch your arm up. The two of you never managed to get introduced before that planet disappeared and you found yourself locked up in the slammer, but she had a nice rack on her, that was for sure.

Slammer means jail, you say to yourself, as a reminder. You're starting to pick up some new slang.


	3. Rose & Kanaya pt 1

Takkataktakkatakkatak, she slammed her fingers into keys like an angry woodpecker, calloused fingertips worn out through overexertion, her eyes burning, eyelids begging her to stop.

Rose Lalonde used to be a Seer of Light. She used to wield a Needlekind strife specibus, and a Tree fetch modus. She was a Derse dreamer, a God Tier at the top of her echeladders. She had traveled universes on a meteor with a group of extraterrestrials, and she engaged in a highly satisfying romantic and sexual relationship with one of them, a Kanaya Maryam.

Now, only that last fact was true. Kanaya slumbered peacefully in her recuperacoon, the clock reading three in the morning on the dot, while Rose pounded away another manuscript. A pile of papers sat on the side of her working desk, the last story, currently in the process of being edited and revised by herself, with the emailed assistance of an editor. She refused to let the publishers wrench control of her tale away from her, or the editor. She had to make all the changes herself. She couldn't trust anyone else with the duty of arranging her vomit of thoughts across the page in a way that pleased her doubtful mind. In this world, she had already published two smash hits, and had released, as a gift to her fans, and a way to vent her mind, a free collection of short stories in the same universe. She was hailed as a young prodigy of an author, her purple prose dazzling crowds, affording her expensive makeup thick enough to cover the dark circles under her eyes when she went to book signings, among other creature comforts.

She tried, but it was never the same. Taking up knitting just made her hands shake. She wished she could point her needlewands once again and summon that power she used to have, in another time and place. She wanted to round the corner in her manor, a forested retreat mostly isolated from the others, a near-duplicate of the old Lalonde estate, and find her alchemiter again. She wanted to make a new outfit with the usage of totems and punch cards again, instead of going on lavish shopping retreats into the city when she needed to wear something new.

The blue glow of the computer screen lit up her pajamas, her hood resting on top of her head, high enough so she could see the screen as she poured herself out into it. At least the cruel orchestrators behind Sburb would allow her that token gesture as a parting gift. How spiteful.

She wanted to tear things down again.

It was four o'clock in the morning, the bottle of Wodka, non-magnetic, lying by her foot slightly emptier than it was the hour before. There was, of course, no such thing as Wodka, or at least, not an actual brand. She had commissioned the bottle to be made uniquely for her, and imbibed from it rather frequently. On a meteor, it was hard to avoid Vriska, but here, in relative solitude, she was free to enhance her mind as long as Kanaya was asleep. Sometimes, Rose felt awfully guilty about lying to her about it, but she knew that without it, her writing would suffer. It was a hole in her dam. She needed to flood the river basin with her blood and tears. Part of her knew that her self-destructive tendencies could only drag her through so long before she became another celebrity that shaved her head bald and went insane before making a glorious comeback five-to-ten years down the line, but that was the part of her that she muffled with the lip of the Wodka bottle.

She could never tell Kanaya how she really felt. How her work environment was leaving her bones achey and sore, because she didn't want to stop writing. Whenever Kanaya left the house, she would promise her that everything was okay, and that she'd remember to take a break and have a glass of water and go to the bathroom and eat a snack, because even after all was said and done, Kanaya couldn't stop herself from being a caretaker.

Rose admired that.

It was almost like she was a rebellious teenager again when she didn't get up, go to the bathroom, have a snack, or have a glass of water. Only when her body cried out in agony did she relent.

She had no way of knowing that when her paramour left the house, to perform whatever errand she was running that day, that Kanaya's void was just as wide.

Kanaya, the fussy Jadeblood, at a loss? Impossible. She was so poised and graceful as she walked with a spring in her step and a swish to her hips, taking small commissions as a seamstress and designer, tending to her garden at the Lalonde Manor. It was impossible that she hurt, Rose thought, on the occasions that she mused about it. Rose didn't think it was possible that anyone in this new world could understand how empty she felt now that the game was over.

Kanaya admired her.

The rebellious teenager side of her, brushing everyone off, cool and suave. Rose was a minor celebrity. She could afford to be dismissive. She could do what she wanted, really. Kanaya just wanted to make sure she was okay. Keep her running.

At least one of them could be important.

How could Rose, the blonde beauty who had captured the hearts and eyes of young adults everywhere with her work, so dutiful and quick-witted as she wrote page after page, defying prying publishers and editors and maintaining her creative control, hurt? How could Rose understand how useless Kanaya felt? She had succeeded, yes, she brought the matriorb to the new world with her, in the breeding caverns of the troll settlement that her and the others retroactively became part of. A mother grub was born, and her species survived, and then they didn't need her anymore. Her job was done. What now?

She drove. She drove, ignorant of the suffering that the light of her life was putting herself through. She drove into the city, occasionally taking the extra hour out of the way to visit Can Town and back. She drove to parks and playgrounds and gardens and stores, looking but never buying, to fundraisers and charity events, stuffing herself with glurge, to motivational speakers, trying to make sense of what was left for her. When Kanaya came back home from a day of driving, eyes dull and vacant, she passed by Rose still working on her next big novel, a bottle of water empty, never noticing the Wodka hidden away, taped to the underside of Rose's chair. Rose never looked at her enough to notice the blankness. On the few occasions that she could rouse Rose from her chair and bring her to bed, forcing herself to go recuperacoon-less for a night just to hold her again, like they used to do much more often, she never noticed Rose's blankness either.

Five o'clock in the morning.

The day before this one was one of those days. "Kanaya, when did your eyes begin to develop that lovely hue?" Rose had asked, attempting to be romantic as she clutched grey skin with a blanket tossed over them. Kanaya was shocked at Rose for not noticing when her eyes began to fill in, and at herself, for not noticing that this was the first time they had really looked at each other in several weeks.

Rose drowned that memory in another swig. They had copulated like wild animals that night. She thought about bringing that phrase into her story, copulating like wild animals. It was just purple enough, but she didn't know where she could include it, and the editors might've rioted. The jade-stained sheets still laid uncleaned by the side of the bed.

Six o'clock came.

When the sun streamed across her eyes, Rose hid the bottle away and flopped herself onto bed, her computer finally shut, as Kanaya began to rouse.


	4. Dave, Karkat, and Jade pt 1

"this isn't working." Dave told himself, slamming his fist into the mirror. A clock blinked three o'clock in the morning as his red eyes clenched and unclenched, his sunglasses discarded.

"is this wrong?" Jade asked herself, her ears twitching as she settled down on the couch for the third time that week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the clock on the wall ticking three o'clock in the morning, July 14th.

"I DON'T SEE WHAT THE FUCKING PROBLEM IS, STRIDER!" Karkat mumbled, without a Strider around to complain to, his face buried in a plush pillow. Dave's clock blinked three o'clock in the morning as his red-filling eyes gazed only soft velvety pillowcase.

Another night, another fight.

Dave was trying to do many things. Too many. Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff merchandise offered enough money to pay the bills, and the Caegar-to-dollar exchange rate was hefty enough that wherever Karkat fucked off to for half the weeks in a month kept the twosome with enough money, but Jade... Jade was an issue. She was his friend, though, and... Dave supposed, his girlfriend, and he couldn't leave her out on the cold. Dave and Karkat, they were a thing, too, and somehow, Dave let the grumpy mutant convince him that dating the two at once would work out. "WE VACILLATE ENOUGH AS IS ANYWAY," He had mentioned during one of their arguments, one of Karkat's "black moods", and then they had wonderful hatesex. Wonderful for Karkat, at least.

Dave didn't miss the game at all. But the sudden switch, being thrust from a Knight into a position of normalcy, had been impossibly jarring. He didn't miss the game, but he missed the meteor. He missed three years hiding from an insane jugglo clown psycho, cuddling with Karkat and watching Dane Cook, and then Troll Dane Cook, the only black in their relationship being the minor jabs they made at each other. Well, after the first year or so, at least. He kind of even missed Vriska's antics, and Terezi's too, but he hadn't seen either of them since everyone entered the new universe. He wondered if things would've turned out better if he had shacked up with her instead. It was idle teenage fun, and even though they still had a bit of that lightheartedness, none of them had really had any lengthy contact with the others after they finished settling in. Sure, they were all geographically closer, him and John and Jade and Rose, and even Jane and Dirk and Jake and Roxy, the furthest of them being a two hour drive away, but their talks were minimal, every one of them consumed with their own issues, outside of the people that lived with each other.

Even then, Dave and Jade didn't really talk too much with each other with things that weren't mundane. Their mouths idled with bedroom chatter when necessary, and shooting the shit when not. The shit that was thoroughly shot. That feces was a bullet ridden corpse by now, even by a shit-pile's standards. They had started to run out of things to gab about to each other. 

It was good practice for Jade, anyway. She had been spending her time trying to learn how to be normal, how to not thump her ass with her tail when she was happy in public, how to interact with people face-to-face instead of through a computer screen. She didn't work, like Dave and Karkat did. In fact, she was kind of eating up their relatively limited funds to pay for community college, cheap as it was, which was the reason for about half of the group's arguments. Jade would yell at Dave and Dave would yell at Karkat and Karkat would yell back and Jade would yell at Karkat for yelling at Dave and Karkat would yell at her for yelling at him because she yelled at Dave first, and on and on the vicious merry-go-round went. Then, inevitably, after everyone's throat was sore, Karkat would go into the bathroom, take a shower, and try so hard to scrub the red residue left on the tiling afterwards, Dave would go to the bed, yell, into a pillow and every once in a while get black with Karkat in the aftermath, and Jade would go curl up on the couch and try and fail to sleep.

It didn't used to happen this frequently.

Karkat felt like he had been cheated twice. No, he felt like he had been cheated and dicked over every fucking opportunity by everything and everyone. His first session ended in disaster when Bec Noir came through and ruined his chance at godhood, and now that he was done, he discovered that, no, he was never going to be a god like he assumed. Or maybe something about their five-session clusterfuck of a new universe had perverted the system somehow. Karkat didn't care. He was angry all the time, probably more than in his adolescence. By now, his eyes were orange, with a deeper layer of bright red around the sclera, and he was still fucking shorter than Dave, god damnit, not even biology could give him that much. He knew that he had no chance with Jade, and he didn't mind - that was a prepubescent fantasy of a dumb wiggler, for all he was concerned. Dave was fine enough for him. On occasion, Dave told him how little he cared for the ravages of their black escapades, when Karkat was in the mood to have that particular quadrant filled, and so, as a compromise, Karkat had filed his nails down. It was the only way he could keep Dave in that quadrant.

Karkat was... Maybe a tiny bit obsessed. Just a little. But he'd never admit that to anyone, even himself. He made excuses for it whenever the thought occurred. He was growing up, it was okay for him to still be a little immature. Once he learned of the Signless's plight, he had tried to think to himself that Dave was his Disciple, knowing that it was a crock of shit. He wanted to keep him in every way he could. That's why he let Dave fool around with Jade, trying to make sure Dave was happy and satisfied. Karkat felt like such a fucking idiot, like this was all his fault that nothing was turning up roses for him. Him and his stupid shitty subconscious and hormone-addled brain and human's weird alien culture.

Three o'clock and a minute passed. Karkat rubbed his sides. He missed having sharper nails.

Three o'clock and five minutes past. Dave regained a degree of his composure, sliding his sunglasses back on, and walking out into the bedroom, sitting on the cushions. Karkat turned his face on the pillow to glare up at him.

"karkles" He said. Karkat grunted and began an obscenity but was cut off in short order. "i'm gonna be on the couch with harley tonight"

"HAVE FUN, SHI-" Karkat began to yell, his throat hoarse before Dave shoved a smuppet-themed pillow onto his face.

"no, i'm tired and we already did your thing today. chill your tits, for christ's sake. Dave said, his southerner's drawl more pronounced when he invoked the name of a deity that he never really believed in, but used to be spoken of with extreme reverence in his old world. He wasn't sure if Jesus even was a figure anymore, or if Christianity was a thing. Maybe he'd look it up and pronounce his findings in a SBaHJ comic. Dave rubbed the raw marks across his side from Karkat's earlier clawing from around midnight-ish, before pulling the pillow off, and putting a weak, semi-sincere kiss onto his grey-skinned boyfriend. "'night"

"HAVE A SPLENDID EVENING, STRIDER, I'LL JUST GO FUCK MYSELF THEN." Karkat replied once Dave was wordlessly out the door of the bedroom, shutting it behind him. Karkat still wasn't used to the idea of "getting enough sleep", and he rarely used his recuperacoon anymore, so most of these nights he just curled up into a ball and stewed in a pile of blankets.

"dave. >:(" Jade announced, folding her arms in and tucking her ears flat against her black hair as she pulled her knees up to her chest.

"mind some company?" He asked, pulling himself onto the couch anyway. There wasn't a single smuppet in sight, not since he gave them all away to Dirk. The only evidence that remained of Bro's obsessions were the pillows, which Dave got made half as an afterthought, half as a memorial for his twisted caregiver, and half because Karkat liked the material.

"a little!! She declared, pulling her face down, clicking her fangs against the fronts of her teeth. "dave... i really like you, and all... we both really really like each other, actually! but...

"i don't think this is working" "i don't think this is working!!! :("

It was true enough. Dave liked Jade. Jade liked Dave back. Karkat still had the faintest flushed crush for Jade that he shelved deep inside of him and pretended didn't exist. Jade only liked Karkat as a friend and comrade. Karkat liked Dave. Dave liked him back, but in not as many ways as Karkat would like.

Jade and Dave's arrangement was constantly in flux between good friends, friends with benefits, lovers, proper significant others, and bitter exes, changing every other day, or sometimes every couple of hours.

Dave nodded, pulled his sunglasses off, and gently lowered himself to the floor. "mind if i go stiff-back on the ground like a proper goddamn dracula tonight, then?" He asked, folding his arms over his chest and trying to bare unimpressive canines compared to his two companions.

The corner of Jade's mouth twitched upwards ever so slightly. She pretended that, in this moment, she was still mad at him. "that'd be nice, yeah :\"


	5. Parcel Mistress pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BEGIN: PM's Quest to Deliver the Mail
> 
> This chapter will likely not make sense as a standalone. Go read the rest of them. Why are you just skipping to chapter 5 anyway?

You've been named a couple of things over your lifetime. Peregrine Mendicant. Prospitian Monarch. Parcel Mistress.

By now, you've decided to take the latter. You're neither a mendicant nor a monarch.

You're the mailman. Er, maillady.

Specifically, the personal courier of The Mayor of Can Town, the Withdrawn Viceroy. You oversee the rapidly-developing governmental subsection that was the mail service, as well as perform the important deliveries relevant to municipal services and missives, such as to your neighboring city of New Washington. You are not sure what a Washington is, or why it is not instead named Large Steel Rectangle City, since that is clearly what it is constructed out of, but it is not your place to question the naming conventions of a cross-species settlement, especially when they offer so many goods and services to Can Town! Speaking of which, it should be approaching that time of the month when...

Yep! The three sharp knocks to your office door indicate the presence of the Maid! Or the Heiress, you suppose, coming to visit once again! Her company has established a very mutually beneficial relationship to Can Town in particular; they deliver new food products, automated laborers, and building materials, and Can Town returns good wills and a friendly smile, as well as some of your town's farmed goods! From what you've noticed, they all seem to use some strange coinage or paper bills or the occasional plastic card with odd symbols on them. Can Town, however, runs pretty exclusively on barter. You open the door and greet the Heiress with a hug and she hugs you back, squeezing your carapace through your uniform with her warm, spongy skin. 

"Good afternoon, Miss Parcel Mistress! Do you have your papers filled and notarized?" She asks, smiling that big, loving grin all the while. You tell her that yes, you do, and you grab the stack of filled-out sheets indicating stocks, shortages, and other such important information for CrockerCorp to know for the month's delivery of goods. She mumbles something about other people being up and about, and you can see her wrist returning to her side as you turn around, having clipped together the papers with several black plastic doodads with metal hinges that hold papers together. You have a healthy supply of the things in your supply closet, also kept well stocked by the grace of the Heiress! Who knew office supplies could be so useful.

"Great!... Um, Miss Parcel Mistress, I don't suppose you'd be able to make some deliveries for me? I don't have a lot of time on my hands these days, and I really need to make sure these letters get to where they need to go intact!" She asks, pulling out a stack of letters from her purse and handing them to you. You grip them, grab her hand, and give it a firm, professional shake, telling her that you will do your sworn duty to ensure that the mail gets to where it needs to be on time and intact! "Thank you so much! You're doing me a ginormous favor, I appreciate it ever-so-much!" Says she, as she gives you a friendly peck on the cheek and waves goodbye while you get ready to go on a mission.

Your first stop brings you into the neighboring city proper - among the many other things CrockerCorp has graciously gifted Can Town with, they've also given them a couple of astounding devices known as "Automobiles", although only a few highly trained professionals, such as yourself, possessed the qualifications to wield them. They made travel so much faster! You are not sure how they work, but oh well. Can't know everything! You deliver the letter, with its fancy blue ink, to an apartment mailbox with three names on it! And you give a double check to the pile and find that there is, in fact, one more letter addressed to this apartment building, although that mailbox only has two names assigned. You plop it in anyway.

The next leg of your trip takes you into a suburb full of nearly identical houses. The sun is shining bright on your pink automobile as you slow down to check every mailbox individually for numbers until you find the correct address, before sliding the letter in, shutting the mailbox, and driving off, leaving the red flappy arm dealie untouched. You are not sure what those are for. They're an odd human thing, you guess.

The last leg of the trip takes place after the first two, with many others in between, but for some reason, this one feels the most important, important enough to narrate about, anyway! It is a rather treacherous road up into a mountainous forest, or maybe a forested mountain. The road gets very narrow, and at one point you almost have to go off of it while you slowly wait for a white-skinned horned girl with impeccable fashion sense to pass by on her bright red motorcycle. It is a neat vehicle! You suppose it is like an automobile, but halved? Perhaps you should ask the Heiress about getting a motorcycle as well! You drive your way up and park your car before you run out of road, the walk to the stately manor situated on top of a waterfall being about two minutes long.

You deposit the final letter and return to your car. What a productive two days of delivery! You are awfully hungry and a bit tired, you have delivered what feels like several dozen letters and only snacked on what you had with you! Of course, some of them were glossed over narratively, but you most definitely did deliver more than just four letters. You suppose it is time to return home now! You take another quick nap in your automobile, and by the time you start driving back, you pass the motorcycle horned lady again in the opposite direction.


	6. Dirk & Jake pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is probably going to be one of the weakest because I do not have that firm of a grasp on the characters of Dirk or Jake. Any critiques or suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you!

100.

 _Yes,_ Jake mused to himself. _Maybe we do have a pretty odd setup here._.

His arms dropped to his side as he flopped flat on the apartment floor. This was his daily routine now, getting up early in the morning (to the tune of about 3 o'clock, maybe a little later), exercising like hell, then going back to sleep at 5 AM or so and resting it off. He took weekends off. He ate relatively well, enjoying food that wasn't pumpkins, tinned preserves, or the porcelain flesh of Frightening Fauna that he now knew were actually Alternian Lusii, like his Grandma Jade was to him, except to trolls. He and Dirk lived in the same apartment, but had mostly kept to themselves. It was a single bedroom, and they usually alternated between one of them sleeping on the couch, and one of them sleeping on the bed, each day. For a week or so in the new universe they tried to rekindle their relationship, but old issues flared up. Dirk is pushy and controlling. Jake is a bit of an uncaring dunce with serious self-esteem issues. They respectfully agreed, after a week of trying things out, that it would be better off if they remained as friends. The conversation went a little like this.

"Jake?" Dirk had said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Yes, dirk? Everything up and keen today?" Jake had responded, flopping back down on the edge next to his then-boyfriend.

"Not really." Dirk had replied, vaguely and mysteriously. He looked up at Jake, and sighed. His gaze was wistful, ponderous, and hidden behind stupid anime shades. 

"To be fair, i was thinking about saying the same, but..." Jake returned, ruffling with the collar of his shirt.

"You were afraid of how I would respond, right?" Dirk said, looking away from Jake and adjusting his glasses to make sure his pupils weren't visible. He was dry-eyed. It was entirely business-like in his approach. Emotions weren't things to be bared just yet.

"Yeah, shucks..." Jake answered, looking at his feet.

And that was that.

He tried not to vent of his plight, either. Jake went to the same community college that Jade went to, to brush up on all of the people skills he had missed. Unlike the majority of his friends, he didn't do anything glamorous. He wasn't a dignitary like Karkat, that adorable short troll that Dave was dating, nor was he an artist like Dave or an author like Rose. Jane had offered him many internship positions at CrockerCorp, but he was still a little afraid of Jane, to be honest. And CrockerCorp. He could do without. The part-time job as a janitorial staff for the college worked enough to help him get through the day and night, and Dirk paid for the majority of the apartment's rent, bills, and food costs. He had plenty of friends he could vent to, but every time he wanted to talk about whether or not he made the right decision, and what he should do now, he stopped. He would always remember the way Jane freaked out at him.

He never wanted to make anyone angry like that again.

Dirk, unlike Jake, had nothing to do at three o'clock in the morning, so instead of exercising to turn his body into a ripped brick shithouse, he just slept like a chump. Jake was knowledgable about movies, guns, and puzzles. Those skills didn't have a whole lot of marketable use. Dirk just had to show up to an engineering and design firm with Squarewave and Sawtooth in tow and he almost was instantly hired, and then fired later in the week for unprofessional behavior. Then, he would move onto the next, and get fired again. Back and forth and back and forth. Slowly, he was starting to run out of firms to apply to. A week ago, he had reluctantly applied to the CrockerCorp R&D department.

Jane had promised all of them, troll and human alike, that she'd be able to find a place for them there if they were needed a job. Almost everyone appreciated the offer and said no thanks. Even under new management, some old biases didn't go away with a snap of the fingers and a wave of the hand.

And thus, Dirk slept, similarly agonizing over his ex-boyfriend and their mutual decision. Dirk knew that he was needy and pushy and an overpowering force of nature to behold. He knew that he could've clung on tight and said "Never mind, stay with me, we'll weather this out.", but he didn't. Morally, he knew that was the correct choice. Both of them needed some kind of fix to their personalities before anything could happen between them again, and not the kind that came with a magical lollipop.

Jake returned from his morning run two hours after the narration started following them, noticing that they had received some mail the day before! And it was from Jane, how absolutely delightful! He hup-hup'd his way up the stairs, his undershirt and headband soaked with sweat, trying not to ruin the letter too much. Her bright, sky-cyan ink was unmistakable! And so was the fact that it said it was from her on it. Dead giveaway! He went into the bathroom and started to wash up, a nice hot shower to get rid of the exertion. He toweled himself dry, flopped onto the couch, and read the letter before preparing to go back to sleep.

It read, as follows:

"Dear Jake & Dirk  
I do hope this letter has managed to reach you well, I'm using the services of Can Town's premiere Parcel Mistress, because I trust her to get the job done. Hoo hoo! Anyway, I'm just sending this letter to ask how you two are doing! I heard that you two had broken up but decided to still live together, and I do sincerely hope that's going well for you two! :B  
Outside from that, I was thinking that it's been a rather long while since we all came together as a group, and would like to cordially invite you to, well, a picnic! Remember that big park we were out in when we came to this new universe, the park near the outskirts of Can Town? I'd like us all to meet up there in a week, Wednesday, July 20th, 2016! I'll provide the snacks for everyone, you two just make sure that you show up! Hoo hoo hoo!  
Hope to see you there!  
Sincerely,  
Jane Crocker, CEO of CrockerCorp

And then there's some other stuff at the bottom, like her office address and stuff, but Jake's eyes sort of glaze over it. 

A picnic? Sounds great!

There's no way this can get awkward or go wrong in any way, shape, or form!


	7. Jane pt 1

Jane was worried.

Sitting in her office, overlooking the city that had formed in their new world from on high, the new, young CEO of CrockerCorp gazed upon her work with her sky blue eyes. Stacks of paper were scattered about the office, forms to fill, inquiries to answer, departments to delegate. She was fairly well-prepared for this, since she as long as she knew how to walk and talk, she was getting schoolfed on the art of business and pencil-pushing.

The new universe they had all made was great! Jane was pretty satisfied with the way things had turned out. It seemed like everyone was happy at first, but then everyone went more or less their separate ways and sort of cut all contact outside of the occasional pestering. That wasn't as satisfying. It was three in the afternoon, the day precisely three months minus a day since they had all entered their world together, and Jane's phone buzzed slightly on her desk.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling gutsyGumshoe [GG]  
GC: J4N3.  
GG: Yes, Terezi? To what do I owe the pleasure?  
GC: H4V3 YOU S33N VR1SK4 R3C3NTLY?  
GG: No, I... Don't think I have. Sorry!  
GC: TH4TS F1N3, TH4NKS 4NYW4Y. BY3!  
GG: Wait! I was actually thinking about setting up a picnic, y'know, all of us together like it was back in the game, sometime next week? Would you perhaps be interested? :B  
GC: 1 4PPR3C14T3 TH3 OFF3R, BUT NO TH4NKS.  
gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling gutsyGumshoe [GG]  


Aw, oh well! Couldn't get everyone. But gosh darnit, was Jane going to try! Already, she had a stack of letters sitting on her desk, and when she had the time, she'd go over to Can Town and get the Parcel Mistress to deliver them. She didn't want to wait too long for the mail to get there, in case the normal postal service got it at people's houses too late. Especially Rose and Kanaya, since they lived rather out-of-the-way compared to the others. Jane really wanted to see them, during the first couple of days when everyone was still in constant contact and still adjusting to the different reality, Rose and Kanaya had struck her as particularly insightful and fun to be around types! So, yeah, a personalized letter for every group of people that she knew of. Even the ones she thought were kind of uncool, like Gamzee. Bygones and all that! Some of them, though, she didn't really know where they lived, like Gamzee, so she just took a shot in the dark - she heard he was staying in the nearby troll settlement, wandering around the lake beaches of a nearby lake, so she addressed it to "The Clown in Purple Bardwear by the Beach of the Lake near the Troll Settlement", and hoped it would get there okay.

She didn't miss the creepy fucker at all, but it was only courteous to extend an invitation. Plus, now that none of them had their god powers anymore, what harm could he do?

The day ended a little later than normal, and Jane found herself driving home as the sun was beginning to dip down instead of when it cast the sky in Dirk's orange eyes, a dark blue like Roxy's void pajamas. She really missed talking to Roxy, but last she heard, her BFFFL (Best Friend Forever For Life) had been having some issues with night terrors, and was trying to deal with that with John and Calliope. Oh how she missed them all.

Dad, her incredible father who she hugged every single day when she got home, had already made dinner and gotten to work on doing Dadly things, like washing his own automobile, by the time Jane arrived in her house in suburbia. The smell of roast chicken hit her nose and she smiled a big grin.

This was the beginning of something really excellent.


	8. INTERMISSION ENGLISH

LET ME GUESS... YOU ASSUMED THAT SINCE YOU WERE IN A "NEW WORLD", OR A "NEW UNIVERSE", THAT YOU WOULDN'T BE HEARING FROM LITTLE. OLD. ME?

HAA HAA. HEE HEE. HOO HOO.   


OF COURSE YOU CAN'T ESCAPE ME. WHAT? I'M SUPPOSED TO BE IN A BLACK HOLE BY NOW? OH. YOU SILLY. SILLY IMBECILE.  
YOU MAY BE. YES. _TECHNICALLY_ CORRECT. I SUPPOSE IT MAY BE FACTUALLY CORRECT THAT YES. I AM INDEED. INSIDE OF A BLACK HOLE. BUT! THAT IS ONLY A MINOR SETBACK. NO PRISON CAN HOLD ME FOR LONG.  
MY ESCAPE WILL BE AS INEVITABLE AS YOUR DEMISE. AFTER ALL. I AM NOT YET THERE. BUT.  
I WILL SOON BE FREE.

AND I WILL BE THERE.

MARK MY WORDS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus marks the end of the first approximate 1/5 of the story. I hope you are enjoying thus far!


	9. The Picnic pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet some friends.

"Glad to see you arrived safely!" The eager-to-please twentysomething chirped from atop her flattened fortress of blankets lying along a grass field, skies as blue as they were the day they arrived. She wished she was saying it to all of her friends, but two people she only vaguely knew was good enough! It was only noon, after all, the rest would arrive shortly, she hoped.

"glad to see you too, crocker!" The taller of the two chirped back, waving an eager grey mitt back. Her companion kind of half-heartedly lifted his arm up, and then back down, without making any sort of concerted effort to wave, arm around the girl's shoulder. If Jane had to hazard a guess, the girl was around 6 feet tall or so, give or take a toss of inches, and fairly wide in figure, her sclera filled in with a deep rusty red, while the other one, red and blue glasses covering blind eyes (that much, she knew), was much shorter, maybe around half a foot or slightly more, and rather rakish in appearance. It took the minute that passed from them gracing her horizon to them entering the nest of blankets thick, thin, woolen and otherwise, for Jane to remember their names.

Aradia and Sollux! And they came bearing gifts!

"Come, sit! Jane fussed, giggling as she ushered them towards the middle of the blanket pile, a smorgasbord of food already set out, most of which she had prepared herself. She quickly glanced over her shoulder to spy her father giving her an approving nod from the shadow of a tree. "Eat, if you're hungry!"

"don't mind if i do! i'll try not to eat you out of hive and home, hehe." She said, before immediately proceeding to do just that, eating up a storm. Her sullen companion offered no explanation while he opened up the small, poorly-woven basket they had brought with them. Inside were a couple of loaves of some sort of... thing that Jane couldn't distinguish between meat or bread. He poked at it, flinched slightly, and turned his head away.

Several minutes passed, with only Aradia's chewing providing some sort of respite.

"So, uh... Where is Feferi at? If I can ask that?" Jane asked, having taken the time to think about who she was trying to refer to again.

"alternia. she's -"

"well, she has several hundred more sweeps ahead of her, so right now she's doing some government stuff on alternia that i don't care about!" Aradia said, with a wickedly sharp-toothed grin. Jane could hear some sort of jubilation inside of Aradia's voice, and she wasn't sure if it was disconcerting or not. "oh, hi!" Aradia yelled, waving at someone in the distance. Jane whirled around to see a human and a troll on the horizon - it was Roxy's mo... It was Rose and Kanaya! Jane gave them an especially hearty wave, not the least because she remembered them quite vividly. Rose's hair was a little different, but they were recognizable nonetheless. Kanaya was about an inch or so taller than Rose and slightly more fuller-figured, with a particular wideness to her red skirt that wasn't matched by her black top. Rose, meanwhile, was decked to the nines for such a suburban occasion, with some sort of lacy, flowery ensemble in blacks, purples, and whites. Her hair was done up in stripes of similar black and white, a bleached, stark color in contrast to the pale, but still blonde tones that Jane remembered. It had been grown out a little, enough that it was tied backwards in a messy bun, her face decorated in similarly elegant makeup that left her in an almost corpselike pallor of contrasts and contours.

Jane was intimidated, awed, and altogether left gaping and speechless by the ethereal beauty of the two. Kanaya was gently glowing, casting a dim light across her thinner lover's face, pulling a side-swiped shadow slightly sunward against the light's natural tug. As they got closer, more features could be made out - the shine on Kanaya's jade colored lipstick, and the matte coloration of Rose's black, each with immaculate eyeliner and perfectly done nails/claws. Jane was silent as they approached the blanket pile and sat down.

"Good afternoon, Miss Crocker. We have received your invitation, and decided that it would do us both some good to get out of the house and come for a visit. I... hope you don't mind that we may have forgotten to bring edibles to share with the rest of us. My sincerest apologies, but, if you would like a suitable replacement, I have in my possession, as some would call it, "illegal hooch", although I prefer the term "Vodka", as it requires less expenditure of my oh-so-precious oxygen in order to expel words forming the same syntactical meaning." Rose said, her eyes shut gracefully as she reached under her dress and pulled out a bottle of vodka, condensation coating the edges. Jane frowned. Rose's voice sounded different than it did before; there was an edge to it, almost like a smoker's voice, but not quite the same. Something seemed unsure about her spoken-prose, like she hadn't been used to speaking that much in a while.

"I'd appreciate it if we followed the legality of the nation we currently live in, ex-demigod-status or not." Jane said, as a gentle reminder to Rose that they were not quite yet of age to drink. 

"Hello Aradia! Hello Sollux!" Kanaya said, grinning, baring sharp fangs as Rose handed over to her the bottle, and she set it aside in the middle with the rest of the foodstuffs. They responded in kind, showing off the basket to the jadeblood. "Grubloaf! Do You Mind If I Were To Partake?"

"feel free!" responded the rustblood, while Rose and Jane discussed Rose's recent work. Somewhere along the line, Jane mentioned that Rose had looked rather haggard, and, in a show of mock offense, the Lalonde had turned her head away, peeked something at the corner of the blanket pile, gasped, and swung her head right back.

Jane followed her gaze, while the rest of the trolls stared. Hair wild, in purple regalia but missing a codpiece, hood, or wings, sat a disheveled looking troll with a lion's mane of tangled curls surrounding two large horns. His eyes were shut, his legs crossed, and his mouth crisscrossed in stitches, but the looming height and curves of his face were unmistakably that of one particular Gamzee Makara.


End file.
